To me, this means that it is more important than ever to convert your website traffic into leads, where you can then nurture the relationship and build trust and eventually conversions.

Other thoughts:

(1) The big companies will not be affected as they have direct access to user information already from their platforms. Examples include Google, YouTube, and Amazon.

(2) For us, the tracking will have to be done using internal tools (Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, and any other pixel type tool that we may use)...

(3) One market segment that is REALLY going to be impacted is the advertising platforms out there who have built their entire business model around the third-party cookie.

(4) The change will cause some major changes in how they can prove what they are providing is performing. New solutions will have to be devised.

(5) For affiliates of Amazon and the like, I am sure there will be some guidance as this change happens over the next couple of years...

For us WA folks...

(1) This change reinforces once again the need to keep up with what is going on in the market...Adapt or perish I believe is the mantra, and that definitely holds true in this case.

(2) The other thing that likely will happen here as this change is implemented is there will be some guidance and training published within the platform so we all know what to do and how to do what we have to do...

Overall...

I do think it will have an effect on affiliates...Just how much remains to be seen as alternatives are developed and deployed. This has been coming for a while as other browsers have done this already...

This all seems a little self-serving in some ways though, doesn't it? The big companies with first-party cookies are going to be just fine...It is the rest of the market that is having to scramble!

Cheers!
Dave : )

Time and time again, companies have shown us that they are properly protecting the huge amounts of data they are collecting on people. I think this is a good step in the right direction towards getting privacy back as long as it doesn't lead to marketer's to doing stupid things to compensate.

Thanks for posting this, Jerry. I've been following this in the news and you've started some great conversation.

It will be increasingly important to build relationships via strong content and collecting emails to connect with our audience independent of clicks and wishes. We're going to have to up our marketing game!

I'm all for eliminating everything to do with tracking online. All of this stuff if done offline people would find it very weird & alarming to say the least but online it has become "just the way it is" and was ever increasing.

I think affiliate marketing has already been impacted to a large degree over the past several years. Same as websites relying on ads. Many millions of people use ad blockers and cookie blockers or at least have their browsers set to purge all cookies etc whenever they are closed. I do the same.

The ideal I think is, like Dale mentioned, to reach people who are ready to buy right now. Next is probably to get people one step back from "buying now" to know, like and trust you so they keep checking out your content.

One day all of this kind of tracking might be gone... cookies, pixel tracking, etc and will need to rely on the url params alone.

So I guess that leaves two main approaches... take advantage of it all as much as possible while it is available and be crushed if / when it changes OR stop relying on any of it and figure out how to make affiliate marketing work without needing any of that stuff so if / when things "go away" and everyone is crying doom & gloom... we are not impacted. :)

In my opinion whenever it comes to cookies, the bottom line is that you should simply focus on providing enough information to encourage the user to make an instant decision.

Cookies mainly come into play when the user is still indecisive & so leaves the page in search of more information.